Matteo Viola battles past Benjamin Mitchell into the last eight – KEIO Challenger 2012
Fourth seed, Matteo Viola of Italy, booked his place in the last-eight stage of the KEIO Challenger in Yokohama, Japan by outlasting the world number 281 from Australia, Benjamin Mitchell, in the second round.
After easily winning the opener, Viola went down in the second set but then came from behind to claim the decider, triumphing 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 in two hours and 11 minutes.
Mitchell drew the first blood, breaking the Italian player in the fourth game to move ahead 3-1. However, Viola bounced back in style, as he did not lose even a single game after that, winning five in a row to seal it 6-3.
The Italian contestant neither hit any ace nor committed any double fault, putting in 59 percent of the first serves and pocketing 11 of the 22 points on them. The 25-year-old also did a very good job on the second deliveries and
returns, as he grabbed 10 of the 15 and 10 of the 16 points on them respectively.
In a similar fashion to the first set, Mitchell hit an early blow to Viola in the second one, taking a 1-0 lead but the Italian player broke back immediately to equalise it at 1-1. However, the Australian claimed four back to back
games later on to move ahead 5-1. Viola came close to levelling the score, as he bagged three consecutively to reduce the trail to 4-5 but he lost the 10th one to go down 4-6.
Mitchell smacked one ace and the same number of double fault in the second set. The Gold Coast, Australia resident hit 67 percent of the first serves and converted 11 of the 18 of them into points. Best part of the 19-year-old’s
game was his flawless second returns, as he secured all the five of them.
In the decider, Mitchell and Viola traded two breaks of serve in the first 11 games to take the score to 6-5 in favour of the latter. The Australian player could not hold his serve at that moment and dropped it 5-7.
Viola will play the world number 352, Liang-Chi Huang of Chinese Taipei, in the quarters.
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